MAC Week 1 Power Rankings: Owl Be Seeing You

MAC Power Rankings will be updated every Tuesday.

Fair warning, since some of these may be strangely misplaced: I'm basing these rankings mostly on the results of one football game. If you thought 12 is a small number of contests for a year, imagine how much of a crapshoot it is to rank 13 teams based on 60 minutes of football against extremely variable talent pools. I'd probably make more friends picking these teams out of a hat, or sorting them according to how many total vowels are in the surnames of their linebackers. Use your own algorithms, and please bring your own grains of salt.

	Team	Last Rank	Last Week	W-L	Riffraff	Next Game
1		N/A	Villanova W 31-24	1-0	Not enough people appreciated this game, including myself, mostly because some of us were still stuck at work at 5 p.m. on a Friday. Still, they technically gave the conference their best win of the week. Which doesn't equate to a compliment.	Thursday @ CMU
2		N/A	@Iowa State L 10-27	0-1	It took them a while to get on the board, but this team has the stamina to play 60 minutes against the Big XII. By far they're the strongest team in the MAC West, but there's always the concern that two back-to-back trips to Big Ten schools will wear them out before conference play.	Saturday North Dakota
3		N/A	Wofford W 33-10	1-0	It's no 'Nova, but the Terriers were ranked No. 27 in the preseason FCS poll, so they did have a little jazz in their step. Relax, Bobcats fans, Boo Jackson will adequately serve your needs at quarterback.	Saturday Toledo
4		N/A	Hampton W 33-0	1-0	As Chief LeFevour is sucked through the waiver wire, Ryan Radcliff seems able enough to command the offense to a generous handful of wins. But the defense just looks killer.	Thursday Temple
5		N/A	Murray State W 41-10	1-0	The more I read about them, the more I'm a believer in that they're more than a dark horse, but a regularly-hued horse capable of winning. They could definitely cause the MAC East to become a delicate power struggle not unlike the Balkan Powder keg.	Saturday @Boston College
6		N/A	Rhode Island W 31-0	1-0	Sure, it's Rhode Island. But this was almost a flawless game for them, although I fear this might be about as high as they'll get all year in the rankings. The teams below them mostly underperformed.	Saturday @Baylor
7		N/A	@Florida L 12-34	0-1	If Miami created more of those fumbles, then they probably go higher. but UF committed their own offensive seppuku, and MU just played good enough not to get spanked. Their defense was solid, but the offense was full of sputters all day. I'm sure any team in the nation would've scored 12 points on that field given those opportunities.	Saturday @EMU
8		N/A	@ Troy L 27-30	0-1	Oh, what a heartbreaker. Tim Dave Clawson's teams are starting to have the reputation of tapering off after a certain point in the game. Finishing strong was their Achilles' heel last year. This year it could be not finishing strong ... and a ton of penalties (13 for 80 yards).	Saturday @Tulsa
9		N/A	@Michigan State L 14-38	0-1	I think when you start your first game in a Big Ten stadium as the visitor, you're supposed to lose like this. It wasn't totally pretty, but at least they showed some talons in the first quarter. Alex Carder might have one of the three best QB seasons in the MAC.	Saturday Nicholls State
10		N/A	Army L 27-31	0-1	Oh, they'll get there. If Army's a 6-6 team again this year, then this game could forebode that EMU will not be completely out of every game they play. Just most of them. And give Ron English credit: zero penalty yards. Although the only other team to accomplish this over the weekend was Ole Miss. If ya ain't cheatin'...	Saturday Miami
11		N/A	Arizona L 2-41	0-1	Ouch. They probably weren't going to beat a Pac-10 favorite, but to score nothing but a safety really underwhelmed everybody. Although the 41 they gave up seems incredibly expected. Maybe that surprise MAC West contender was a bit premature.	Saturday @OHIO
12		N/A	Southeast Missouri State W 27-10	1-0	Well, sure, they won a game. But not by much, and it looked like SEMO just pooped out after the first half. You can't just get a win over a lesser FCS team and think you'll hit the top half of the rankings, fellas.	Saturday Liberty
13		N/A	Syracuse 29-3	0-1	Gak. I didn't even know 12-for-35 passing was possible in Division I. And rolling up 82 yards of penalties certainly didn't help the cause either. But at least they didn't turn the ball over. That's about all you take away from the game. Or that if Syracuse is the surprise team of the year, this don't look so bad.	Saturday Gardner-Webb